Run, Forrest, Run! Recent College Grad Running Movie Route

Barclay Oudersluys’ favorite movie is Forrest Gump. This summer, Oudersluys, like the title character in the 1994 Best Picture winner, just feels like running.

Oudersluys, a Birmingham, Michigan, native, is running 3,200 miles from California’s Santa Monica Yacht Harbor and Pier to the Marshall Point Lighthouse in Maine. He’ll do his best to match the cross-country route made famous by Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. He started his journey, which he is calling Project Gump, on May 9, according to The Ann Arbor News[4].

“Honestly, it just sounded like something fun to do,” Oudersluys said over the phone from the desert on Day 4 of his journey.

He’s not running back and forth for three years, two months, 14 days and 16 hours like Gump does in the movie. Oudersluys is planning to run the route in 100 days, so he’ll have to travel about 32 miles per day. Throughout his 100-day trek, he’s raising money for the Hall STEPS Foundation[5], a nonprofit founded by professional runners Ryan[6] and Sara Hall[7] to fight global poverty through better health.

He knew when he started planning the trip about a year and a half ago that he wanted to raise money for a charity. “You don’t do something this big and just do it on your own,” he said.

Oudersluys is a recent University of Michigan nuclear engineering graduate. He starts law school at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall, and he’s doing most of the running on his own. But he’s not all by his lonesome.

Throughout the trip, someone will be accompanying him in a van that holds his supplies—food, a rice cooker, extra shoes, a first-aid kit, and sleeping gear. The van will meet him at certain checkpoints throughout his run and will also act as his mobile home where he can sleep and recover.

Using contextual clues from the film to match the route as closely to Gump as possible—and a Google search of “Forrest Gump Running Route”—Oudersluys mapped a course[8] that will take him through 16 states.

Each day, he plans to wake up and run about 20 miles before the heat becomes unbearable. Then, he’ll take a break in the middle of the day before adding another 10 to 15 miles in the evening.

To prepare for the trip, Oudersluys trained by running 20 to 25 miles four days a week—15 in the morning and five to 10 in the evening.

This isn’t Oudersluys’ first foray into lengthy runs. He’s completed an Ironman, the Michigan Ultramarathon, and the Western States Endurance Run[9], a 100-mile trek in California.

“Once I get into Colorado and start going through those mountains it’s going to be tough,” Oudersluys said. “But it will be pretty early in the run so I can manage.”

Aside from the route, Oudersluys is paying homage to Forrest Gump’s character in one more way: he’s not shaving or cutting his hair. It won’t reach the preposterous length of Gump’s[10], but after 100 days and more than 3,000 miles, his facial hair and locks would likely make Gump proud.